#dark calling

Kernel...is a character I find hard to summarise or react to. I like him fine in his first outing, back in Demon Thief, but as the books progress I like him less and less. He’s cold and sarcastic to everyone, detatched from humanity and callous. And in this one, paranoid. I mean, he’s right, but his suspicions of everyone else are grating. I think part of the problem here is that Kernel is given a lot less POV time to grow and develop as compared to Grubbs, so we the reader don’t know him as well. We’ve seen less of his story and development, so he doesn’t come across as well.

The Old Creatures are the main focus of this book, as well as their exposition and offer to Kernel. This is another exposition-heavy book, which...fine. Like, it’s fine, it’s not particularly bad exposition and it is broken up by action, it’s just a lot that’s being introduced this late in the series.

Two of my larger problems with the series rear their head here. I’m a little put off by this series’ treatment of woman. I know from Shan’s other writing that his portrayal of female characters can trend misogynistic - they’re all sexy badasses or sexy evil ladies, often defined by sex appeal or relationships to male characters. Meera is a classic example of this, her physical attractiveness is constantly brought up (I think the only time it isn’t is from Bec’s POV, which is interesting) and every man lusts after her. There are on the whole more male fighters than female, and the women that exist tend to die off earlier than the men, even if the men got just as beat-up or sometimes literally ripped apart. It’s not the worst portrayal of women ever, but it does make me cringe a bit.

My other big problem is with this and the last two book - the repetition. We had one from Bec’s POV, one from Grubbs’, and this one from Kernel’s, and they cross over a fair amount, meaning we get to see the same scenes. Again. And again. Sure, there are slightly different perspectives, but when I sit through at least 20 or so pages of the exact same events, dialogue, and exposition with minimal differences, I get bored quickly. Shan could have paraphrased or skipped over some of this stuff, and I get why he didn’t, but I still don’t think it was a good call.